Mr. Jefferson ended his best-known sentence with “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The only thing missing was maps.

In the Scholars’ Lab, we’re all about the spatial goodness. Inspired by Kansas State University’s Seven Deadly Sins maps, we set about converting the qualities of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness into quantities we could visualize through maps. Brainstorming commenced on how best to measure the unmeasurable. Mappiness ensued.

We calculated a score for Life, for Liberty, and for the Pursuit of Happiness for each county in the continental U.S. and mapped how each county’s score deviated from the mean. So our maps highlight extremes, both high and low.

Transforming datasets from a spreadsheet to a map takes advantage of our human ability to consume mass quantities of information visually. Rows of numbers stashed away in academic journals and US Census tables come alive when mapped to show comparisons with their neighbors both near and far. Patterns and clusters appear. New questions are asked. New answers come. New maps emerge.

As a former Geographic Information Systems Specialist for the Scholars' Lab, Kelly worked with faculty, staff, and students to visualize, analyze, create, and manage geographic data. He earned a master's degree in Geographic Information Science from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. His research interests include applied geography and cartography as an art form.

9 Comments

I just can’t tell the colors, I might be a little green-red colorblind, but I kid you not, except the dark and the yellow, it’s all the same to me, so maybe also for a couple percent of the population.

So in Kansas they map “expenditures on art, entertainment and recreation compared with employment” and call it sloth; in Virginia they map “the ratio of art, entertainment and recreation establishments to total population” and call it the pursuit of happiness. The maps don’t look much alike. Is the difference all in the denominators? or in the scholars’ point of view?

Very nice, but you should credit Christopher Murray and associates (Harvard School of Public Health) who provided detailed and compelling maps of life expectancy, by county, for 1990 (and periodically updated). His maps were published over a decade ago

These maps are so cool, but my dad who has red-green color-blindness can’t distinguish between the different areas (can only see lighter or darker shading). Any chance you’ll make a different version? (My dad says blue and yellow is another color-blindness, but less common.

Outstanding! Except that the “happiness” map gives undue credit to counties that are home to national parks and the like, which are enjoyed by people who come from much farther afield. I’m not sure how one could nuance the data, though, to map the happiness effect of a facility beyond the place where it is located.